In storm deaths, mystery, fate and bad timing

NEW YORK TIMES

October 30, 2012Updated: October 30, 2012 10:19pm

They stepped in the wrong puddle. They walked the dog at the wrong moment. Or they did exactly what all the emergency experts instructed them to do - they huddled inside and waited for its anger to go away.

Hurricane Sandy, in the wily and savage way of natural disasters, expressed its full assortment of lethal methods as it hit the East Coast on Monday night. In its howling sweep, the authorities said the storm claimed at least 39 lives in eight states.

They were infants and adolescents, people embarking on careers and those looking back on them - the ones who paid the price of this most destructive of storms. In Franklin Township, Pa., an 8-year-old boy was crushed by a tree when he ran outside to check on his family's calves. A woman died in Somerset County, Pa., when her car slid off a snowy road.

There were 18 deaths reported in New York City, where the toll was heaviest, and five more fatalities elsewhere in the state.

Most of all, it was the trees. Uprooted or cracked by the furious winds, they became weapons that flattened cars, houses and pedestrians.

But also, a woman was killed by a severed power line. A man was swept by flooding waters out of his house and through the glass of a store. The power blinked off for a 75-year-old woman on a respirator, and a heart attack killed her. Three people, ages 50, 57 and 72, were found drowned in separate basements.

And the storm left its share of mysteries.

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A parking lot attendant was found dead in a subterranean parking garage in TriBeCa, the precise cause unclear. The body of an unidentified woman washed up on Georgia Beach in East Hampton, on Long Island.

Each victim had their own story. Here are some of them:

Walking the dog

They did what dog owners do. They walked the dog. Jessie Streich-Kest was 24 and Jacob Vogelman was 23. They were friends living in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Around 8 on Monday evening, during the howling viciousness of the storm, they ventured out with her dog, Max, a white pit bull mix.

In rapid succession, perhaps within a space of no more than a half-hour, the brutal winds knocked down three trees. There was a booming sound as one fell. One of the trees on the south side of the block crushed Streich-Kest and Vogelman.

Their bodies were not found until Tuesday morning. No one realized that the trees had hit anyone.

The dog was bruised and was being cared for at an animal shelter.

Wanted photos

In Richmond Hill, Queens, a power line the length of a block on 105th Avenue between 134th and 135th Streets snapped and crumpled to the ground. The frayed end of the line began sparking wildly.

Around 8 on Monday night, according to witnesses and a friend, a 23-year-old woman who lived at the end of the block came out to her driveway clutching a camera.

Her name was Lauren Abraham, and she went by Lola. She was a licensed makeup artist who maintained a makeup studio in the basement of the house, which her parents owned. She used the third floor as a makeshift photography studio for shots to advertise her makeup skills.

Elpidio Nunez, a close friend for 10 years, said she was passionate about making her friends look gorgeous before a night out at the clubs.

The two had spoken at 7 p.m. The line was still sparking as Abraham walked down the driveway and into the rain-drenched street. She came into contact with one end of the snapped wire.

She caught fire.

A half-dozen or so witnesses watched in utter horror. Nunez woke up in the middle of the night. He had a sick feeling that something was very wrong. He sent text messages to Abraham to see if she was all right. Nothing came back.

Bonds of friendship

They did what they were supposed to, what they thought would get them safely through it.

North Salem in upper Westchester County is horse country, and it has estates owned by the well-off, but it is mainly a working-class town dotted with winterized bungalows.

Jack Baumler, 11, was a sixth-grader known as a star shortstop in the local Little League. Michael Robson, 13, was his best friend and neighbor.

Valerie Baumler, Jack's mother, and the boys were spending the night together, along with two other boys.

They were watching television, the winds pounding outside, when the hurricane uprooted an enormous tree. It ripped through the roof of the compact cottage. Jack and Michael were killed.